


A Small Hope

by boychik



Series: The Scattered Past [1]
Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: 104, Drabble, Kidfic, M/M, Rain, before high-school enmity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 02:19:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boychik/pseuds/boychik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s on the back road, by the cemetery, that he sees Watanuki.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Small Hope

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  [ ★](http://www.rainymood.com/)   
> 
> 
> I see Watanuki as the kind of person who was very quiet and kind of awkward as a child but as he grew he built a wall around the core of his heart and became the person he is at the start of xxxHolic. I wanted to show a time where Watanuki & Doumeki's friendship had begun as open and gentle, long before the end of their childhood. 

It’s raining when school gets out. Doumeki grabs his umbrella from its hanging place on one of the wooden pegs across from the cubbies. His classmates’ galoshes wait patiently under the row of burdened pegs, lined up like soldiers. Some kids are packing up, slipping on their waterproof jackets, pulling on their rain boots, struggling with their bright and oversized backpacks. Doumeki heads past them, past the uniform desks and the teacher filing away a report in one of her cabinets and the windows with raindrops rolling off the panes like fat tears, and toward the back of the school. It’s from the path at the back of the school that he plods back home on his unusually tall legs. After a mile or so, the tip of the temple will emerge on the horizon, and he will know he is home.

The rain is thick and forms a white fog that rises from the ground, almost like steam or the ragged breath of spirits as they race between the sky and the underground.

The path in the back of the schoolyard is ashy-black and gently curved, falling down a hill and twisting around a cemetery. Doumeki isn’t any more superstitious than he needs to be. He doesn’t hold his breath or increase his strides when he passes by the cemetery—it’s just a plot of land, filled with the dead and their spirits—but he doesn’t slow down or luxuriate in the view either. Today, though, something catches his eye. There’s someone standing in the cemetery, all alone in the rain.

He recognizes the boy—it’s Kimihiro Watanuki. He’s in his class. Fifth grade. Ms. Kimura. Class B. Black hair and blue eyes like a stray cat. He must have slipped out earlier than the rest of the students and come to stand out here.

Watanuki is standing in the thick white mist in front of a tombstone as the rain falls over him. He’s not holding an umbrella. He’s not holding anything at all, not even flowers. He’s just standing, doing nothing, just staring down at his feet to where Doumeki assumes there’s a grave. He is drenched, a tiny dark figure among an unremitting mist. 

Doumeki trudges over to where Watanuki is standing. He doesn’t say anything, just puts the umbrella up over the both of them. Doumeki’s arm is long and his grip is steady. He can easily shield them both from the persistent rain. After a while Watanuki raises his gaze from its fixed spot on the ground and looks over at Doumeki. He parts his pale lips like he wants to say What are you doing? but he doesn’t say anything, just turns back to face the ground. This is all right with Doumeki. He says nothing. To Doumeki, silence is never awkward, but always welcome. He sees it akin to a soft blanket, covering the two of them like his wet plastic umbrella. Rain splashes at their feet as they stand in silence, a steady _plish plish plish_ , floating down the exoskeleton of the umbrella and soaking into the earth.

The longer they stand there together, the lighter the rain gets. Watanuki’s breathing has changed. He slowly slips a hand on the umbrella handle. His fingers lie below Doumeki’s, then crawl slightly upward. Kimihiro Watanuki’s fingers, slim and white like the still-smoking cigarettes that sometimes dare to desecrate the temple grounds, close lightly around his own. The white mist has cleared. Doumeki and Watanuki walk home in silence. When they get to the gate at Doumeki’s home, Watanuki doesn’t let go of the umbrella. They slip inside the temple.

×××

The Doumeki family temple is their shelter against the storm.

They go inside and even the austere geometry of the smooth sharp walls and floors is welcoming, comforting in its absolute lack of water. It’s the driest harbor Watanuki’s ever seen.

Watanuki shivers in his wet uniform and Doumeki brings him clothing: his spare set of archery clothes, well-worn but clean and dry. The sleeves hang off Watanuki’s wrists and fingers. His feet are shrouded in pools of fabric. 

It’s only once they’re both clean and relatively dry that Watanuki breaks the silence.

“Did you see him,” he says. He takes a delicate sip on his tea. Smoke curls upwards, as though yearning, and vanishes before it touches the ceiling.

“See him,” Doumeki repeats.

Watanuki nods, gripping the china teacup in his cool fingers and blowing across the rim.

“I did feel…a presence,” Doumeki says, and Watanuki affirms this with another nod. “Is that what you were staring at?”

“My friend,” Watanuki says.

Doumeki’s never seen Watanuki hang around anyone else.

“He wanted to leave,” Watanuki explains. “But he couldn’t.”

“I made him leave,” Doumeki says. 

“Yes,” says Watanuki.

“Your friend was dead all along,” Doumeki says. “And now he’s gone.”

Watanuki sips his tea for a long moment. When he looks up it’s with sadder eyes than before. They’re lovely, to be sure—an edge of tears glistens like the waves on the surface of the world. Like the world, Watanuki is two-thirds water. Doumeki is too.

“It’s okay,” says Doumeki softly. Then he reconsiders: “Is it?”

“He’s in the place that he should be now,” Watanuki says. “I probably won’t see him again.” He sends his morose glance out the window, dark trees flailing the silhouettes of skinny branches in the wind. He’s still sad, sipping his tea, sitting there in Doumeki’s old clothes. But perhaps he’s not as miserable as before. It’s a small hope that gives Doumeki a strange feeling.

When the rain clears, Watanuki slips behind the folding screen and changes back into his uniform. It’s reasonably dry, if a bit rumpled, and in any case fits him better than anything Doumeki has to offer. Watanuki stands up to leave. “Thank you for the clothes,” he mumbles, handing the folded pile—unusually neat—back to Doumeki.

“I’ll see you again,” Doumeki says, and Watanuki almost manages a smile.

×××

The next time it rains, the spirits pour out of the earth again. Watanuki tries to leave school early, wants to get home before he has to see them again. They came as if out of a nightmare, those dark smoggy masses with their gasping mouths and shark-sharp teeth, their flaring nostrils and bulging eyes. But it’s not a dream. They follow him about the town once the cover of clouds has descended—yes, it’s always the worst when it rains—groping at his shoulders and pulling at his school bag when all he wants is for them to leave him alone. No matter how much he screams, the dead do not listen.

Worst of all is the fact that the boy who was his friend may very well have changed his shape, left his shell of skin behind and joined with the rain’s white mist or that vicious black smog of monstrous ghosts or the violet-grey smoke that on starless nights emanates from the underground… 

Even Himawari-chan’s bright bauble of a voice cannot dissuade him from leaving. “Where are you going, Kimi-chan?” she says with a charming tip of the head that makes her twintails bounce.

“Home,” is Watanuki’s only reply. It cuts him up that he’s so curt to this lovely creature—yes, even at ten Watanuki was acutely sensitive to this girl who had bloomed like a sunflower above the violets—but he can’t help it. If only he could make himself invisible! Then he’d feel more like himself. In any case, it would be better than living as though he and the world are staring at each other through a thin pane of glass.

It’s barely begun to drizzle but his anxiety is dizzying, like vertigo. He cuts through the back way and as he heads downhill, stepping farther and farther from school, his bad feelings begin to dissipate. His vertigo is disappearing only to be replaced by the vaguest sense of purpose.

He steps along the path. Before he knows it, he looks up and sees the spire of the Doumeki temple glinting in the sun. The door is unlocked. Watanuki slips in.

He lies on the floor and looks up at the ceiling. It’s the same feeling of straight, blank serenity emanating from its core. Last time, with Doumeki, he was too upset let his feelings escape on the air and blow out of the temple, so did his sadness blur his vision. But now, it is quiet. It is dry. It is peaceful. Dust motes float in the golden air. Watanuki watches them drift up and down, through the windows and feels his eyelids grow heavier, twitching shut and blocking any traces of cold. Maybe for once, he won’t have any dreams. It’s a small hope.

Too soon comes the swish of the door opening and the click of it shut. A few paces: Doumeki’s long footsteps. They stop as he crouches near Watanuki’s supine body. And finally the name, a swift call from the land of the living: “Watanuki?”

Watanuki wakes with a start.

_I’m not supposed to be here._

“I’m sorry, I’m _sorry_ , I—”

“It’s okay.”

Watanuki stops scrambling to get up and gapes. He’s…not mad? But smiling?

(“And that’s when I knew you were weird,” Watanuki announces.)

“It’s fine.”

Watanuki notices that Doumeki is dressed in his loose white archer’s shirt and dark blue hakama.

“Why don’t you join me?” Doumeki points outside. The skies are clear. There’s no trace of mist, or rain, or cloud. Watanuki’s heart suddenly feels lighter, unburdened. Perhaps the boy who was his friend really did move on.

The old archery uniform is neatly folded, stacked in the corner of the room. It’s the work of a moment to slip it on and roll up the sleeves and the legs, three times each. Watanuki promises to refold it perfectly when he’s done.

(“And that’s when I knew _you_ were weird,” Doumeki replies.)

Watanuki takes Doumeki’s hand, and they step outside, bows in hands.

Doumeki’s profile as he holds his bow and arrow aloft—Watanuki feels a quiver, so still is the other boy as he draws back the bow, aims, and fires. He’s near perfect, again and again. 

Watanuki can barely draw the bow. Each time he tries to steady the bow, his arms just get wobblier. His arrows keep falling short of the target, flat and limp on the ground, mere yards away from his feet, again and again. Doumeki doesn’t say a word against him, just repositions his hands and feet where they need to go. He does not ask how he’s feeling.

At the end of the day, twilight sets in and they have to part ways. “You’re not alone, you know,” Doumeki says. Watanuki looks at the ground.

(“Do you want to reenact what happens next?” Doumeki asks.

“No!” Watanuki says, and swats Doumeki on the arm.

Doumeki chuckles and draws him tighter. “It’s okay,” he says. “It was just a small hope.”)

“We could be friends if you want,” Doumeki offers.

That time, Watanuki manages more than a smile.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says to Doumeki, and stands on his tiptoes to—

(Doumeki kisses Watanuki on the cheek.

“Hey!” Watanuki squirms.)

—Watanuki lowers back on his feet and smiles. His expression is so clear. Doumeki feels the weight of his gratitude settle around his shoulders like the weight of the cloudless sky.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Doumeki echoes back.

He watches Watanuki’s figure recede past the tall grasses outside of the temple and down the straight and narrow path until he vanishes in the haze of twilight.


End file.
